It is only reasonable to suppose that Edward de Vere,
17th Earl of Oxford, writing under the pen-name William Shakespeare, would
have left a clue to his authorship in the plays themselves.

It is unlikely that this clue would have consisted
of a cipher. Ciphers require a key, or the precise placement of text, neither
of which was a practicable option.

A better solution was for Oxford to allude, within
the plays, to some written work outside them. This allusion would, of necessity,
have to be to a work which was both widely available and very well known
to Oxfords contemporaries, and which Oxford could be certain would
be equally widely available and well known to succeeding generations.

The choice was Lylys Latin Grammar, a work
committed to memory by every educated Elizabethan, and used as a standard
grammar text until the eighteenth century.

The facsimile reproduced to the right shows the page
in Lylys Latin Grammar to which Oxford referred in the Shakespeare
plays, a page which contains the sentence 'Edwardus is my proper name'.